Eyewitness Accounts of LaGuardia Crash
Eyewitnesses have recounted the moment Air Canada flight AC8646 collided with a fire truck on the runway at New York's LaGuardia Airport, resulting in the deaths of two pilots and injuries to dozens of others.
"We were literally like 100 metres away,"said 23-year-old Leo Medina, who was aboard another plane on the tarmac when the crash occurred.
"It was like the plane got cut in half."
Medina told the BBC that he subsequently had to return to the gate and remained at the airport for over 12 hours, sleeping on the floor using a pile of jackets as a makeshift bed.
Passenger Rebecca Liquori, who was on the Air Canada flight arriving from Montreal, described the incident to News12 Long Island, recalling a loud
"boom"shortly after landing.
"As we were descending, we hit a lot of turbulence,"she said.
"Then we landed very roughly… Everyone felt it. It was like the plane jolted and you heard the pilot try to brake trying to prevent the collision."
"As you heard the brake, a couple seconds later it was just a very loud boom,"Liquori added.
"Everybody jolted out of their seats."
Details of the Crash and Immediate Response
The crash occurred at 23:40 local time on Sunday (03:40 GMT on Monday), resulting in the deaths of two pilots and the hospitalization of 41 other individuals, some with serious injuries.
Audio recordings from the LaGuardia air traffic control tower captured a staff member urgently instructing:
"'Truck One, stop, stop, stop!"moments before the collision.
The fire truck involved had been dispatched minutes earlier to address a separate incident on another aircraft, which had reported an issue related to an odour, according to Port Authority executive director Kathryn Garcia.
Liquori described how passengers assisted one another in evacuating by sliding down a wing to exit the plane.
"I'm just happy to be alive,"she said.
"I would have never pictured a one-hour flight that I've done countless times … ending like this."
Official Statements and Passenger Experiences
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani characterized the event as a
"tragic collision"and confirmed that the National Transportation Safety Board is conducting an investigation into the incident.
"I am grateful to our first responders, whose swift actions saved lives."
Passenger Jack Cabot, also aboard the crashed plane, described the situation to CNN as chaotic.
"We went down for a regular landing,"he said.
"We immediately hit something and it was just chaos from there … Everybody was hunkered down and everybody was screaming."
CBS News, the BBC's US partner, reported that a flight attendant was found alive and strapped into her seat outside the plane after falling through a hole in the aircraft floor during the crash. She sustained serious but non-life-threatening injuries.
Airport Closure and Impact on Travelers
LaGuardia Airport, one of the busiest airports in the United States, has been closed since the crash, causing hundreds of flight delays and cancellations.
One traveler, 26-year-old Katie Rojas, whose flight to Chicago was on the runway and ready for departure when the crash occurred, expressed her feelings about the event.
"It's scary. You never know if it could have been one of us."
